Tony Cohen, Australian record producer and ''sound of Melbourne'', dies, aged 60

By Martin Boulton

Updated3 August 2017 — 3:22pmfirst published at 11:49am

Record producer and sound engineer Tony Cohen, who had a long and celebrated career working with Australian musicians including Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Go-Betweens and Paul Kelly, has died aged 60.

Tributes to Cohen, who won three ARIA awards, have begun flowing on social media following a statement on Twitter from his brother Martin, who said Tony Cohen "passed away peacefully in Dandenong Hospital" earlier this week.

Tony Cohen in his early days behind the mixing desk.Credit:The Age

"Tony was a legend of Australian music," his brother wrote. "As brothers we were like chalk and cheese. But, I loved him and fully respect what he achieved in his career. He was technically brilliant, but also a caring, big-hearted man."

Songwriter, singer and guitarist Kim Salmon, who worked with Cohen on several recording projects, including two Kim Salmon and the Surrealists' albums in the mid-1990s and the Beasts of Bourbon, described Cohen as "a true great", adding on his Facebook post it was "an absolute privilege working with him but an even greater honour to count him as a friend".

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The Cruel Sea at the 1994 ARIA Awards (Photo by Julian Andrews).Credit:Julian Andrews

Salmon's fellow band member in the Beasts of Bourbon, Spencer P. Jones, worked with Cohen on the band's Axeman's Jazz album and 1991's The Low Road, and said he was "lost for words after hearing about the shock loss of our good friend" and sent his "sincerest condolences" to Cohen's family.

"It was an absolute pleasure to see you after all these years and work with you in the studio again last year with Kid Congo," Jones said.

Cohen's career behind the mixing desk began in the mid-1970s in Melbourne, where he became a major influence on the sound of the city's thriving music scene. In 1976 he worked on the Ferrets' 1976 debut album Dreams of a Love and by the early 1980s he was working with the Moodists, the Birthday Party, Models, Hunters & Collectors, the Reels and Sacred Cowboys among others.

Before long, Cohen was "the guy in the mid-80s" that bands wanted to work with, partly because he worked at night and was cheaper, but also because of the sound he helped create, according to former Blue Ruin singer Quincy McLean.

Tony Cohen produced TISM's 1992 album The Beasts of Suburban.

"He was phenomenal," McLean told Fairfax Media.

"Coming back into Richmond Recorders at 4am or 6am, whatever, you'd find Tony hunched over the desk throbbing in time to the music," McLean said. "He'd be entranced in something you'd created earlier as a bunch of guys ... but suddenly there was a full-blown gothic landscape with trees blowing in a reverberant wind, Tony holding on for dear life to the console so that the tornado he'd conjured wouldn't drag you all into the abyss, that's what working with Tony Cohen was like.

"That sound that they talk about of Melbourne in the `80s, that was Tony Cohen."

As well as the eight Bad Seeds albums Cohen worked on between 1984 and 2001, there was his work with Crime & the City Solution, three Cruel Sea albums (winning ARIA's producer of the year for The Honeymoon Is Over in 1994), TISM, the Blackeyed Susans, Mick Harvey, Tex Perkins and many more.

In 1995 Cohen won ARIA's producer of the year and engineer of the year awards, having worked on the Bad Seeds' album Let Love In, as well as projects with Dave Graney, Maurice Frawley, Powderfinger and more during the eligibility period.

"He used the console like a man possessed, like a crazy shaman with a divining rod," recalls McLean, who now runs Bakehouse Studios in Richmond. "If he couldn't find the the gold it probably wasn't there to be found."